


Disaster Is Mighty Loved

by acommontater



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmates, trans!kurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4401908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/acommontater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Blaine Anderson is eight, his Name starts to appear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt by adropofred/foxykurt. The title is from Jason Mraz's 'O Lover'.  
> Over here on tumblr: http://diva-blaine.tumblr.com/post/35611753548/disaster-is-mighty-loved

When Blaine Anderson is eight, his Name starts to appear.

It wasn’t unusual for Names to start to appear so early on in life, but it wasn’t common either. No one was quite sure where the Names had come from or when they started appearing, but no two were alike. The writing of the Name was always your soulmate’s handwriting, and it could appear anywhere on your body. (Very, very rarely, some person would never be Named. It was thought to be an unbearable life to live.)

Blaine has always loved the idea of Named pairs- that eventually he would meet the person on his skin and they would be perfect for each other. Blaine would someday actually be able to make someone happy just by being Blaine Anderson. (He hadn’t met anyone yet that was happy with him.)

At first he thought he'd scratched himself somehow, but then realized the marks were the dark inky coloring of Names. It wasn’t much, just five unevenly spaced horizontal lines, but it was the best thing Blaine had ever seen.

When Blaine is fifteen he takes a boy to a dance, a friend, not his soulmate, and his Name has filled in the last name.  _Hummel_ \- he traces it over and over again, dreamily imagining different variations of their names. (Anderson-Hummel? Hummel-Anderson? Blaine Hummel? I…. Anderson?) The first name of his soulmate remains stubbornly blank, save for those two seperate lines. (Ian? Ianto? Ianna?) He does research- maybe it was another language? Code? but comes up empty-handed everytime.

Blaine is still fifteen, finally out of the hospital, with promises to go to a new school the next year. (His wrist is in a cast and he doesn’t think to look at his Name for a long time.)

Blaine is still fifteen when he meets the Warblers. He accidentally stumbles into a rehearsal when he’s looking for a place to study and finds himself swept up in the group. (They’d been short a person for some reason and when they’d found out Blaine could carry a tune and follow a beat, he was immediately assimilated.)

Blaine is sixteen and it is the beginning of the spring semester. He is wondering if he’ll ever meet his Named. A few months ago he’d finally realized that his Name had filled in.  _Kurt Hummel_  curls gently around the thin skin of his wrist, usually covered by a thick watch band or long sleeves or a leather cuff.

Blaine is seventeen and running late. He hurries down the stairs, checking his pocket watch to see if Wes is going to kill him or not.

“Um, excuse me?”

Blaine turns around and…. yeah he’s going to be late. Wes’ll just have to get over it.

“Hi. I’m new here. Do you know what’s going on?”

Blaine may or may not’ve been really paying attention to what the boy was saying. He didn’t even really care at the moment that he wasn’t even a Dalton student, because guys like this did not just happen to wander around where guys like Blaine can meet them. For the breifest of moments he seriously considered using one of the cheesy pick-up lines that David was so fond of. He sticks out his hand.

“I’m Blaine.”

The boy freezes for a fraction of a second before taking Blaine’s hand.

“Kurt.”

Blaine is pretty sure that time stops. He doesn’t remember his atrociously flirty explanation of what is happening- he’s pretty sure his brain is shorted out. (Can that happen?) There are only so many 'Kurts’ in the world right?

Blaine does remember being able to hold onto Kurt’s (Curt? Qurt?) hand for the entirety of the long walk through a side hallway.The look on Curt/Kurt/Qurt’s face when the Warblers start singing is worth the extra minute (and the possibility that Wes will throw something heavy at him). The song ends, and all Blaine can see is Qurt/Kurt/Curt clapping enthusiastically.

He convinces Wes and David to help him out and they whisk Kurt/Curt/Qurt away for coffee in the senior lounge.

Kurt is hesitant, tense, as he sits across the table from them. (Blaine just wants to smooth away the sharp angles and hard lines and make that smile that Kurt/Curt had had a few minutes ago reappear.)

“It’s very civilized of you to give me coffee before beating me up.”

Blaine starts at that.

“No!” Now Kurt (oh please let him be Kurt) is startled. Blaine tones it down. “I mean….”

David cuts him off.

“What Blaine is trying to say is that we have a strict zero tolerance policy here, and that even if we had wanted to beat you up, we wouldn’t be able to.”

“Oh.” Kurt/Curt looks thoughtful, staring down into his coffee.

“Anyway,” Wes says. “As you already know, this is Blaine, that’s David, and I’m Wes.”

“Kurt.” Kurt says, shaking Wes’ proffered hand. “Kurt Hummel.”

Blaine had just taken an unfortunate gulp of coffee and narrowly avoids spewing it everywhere is shock. As is it, he chokes and coughs in a horribly not-attractive way as David thumps him on the back. Wes and David know, and Kurt is warily watching the scene from his seat.

“I’m sorry.” Blaine catches his breath. “I don’t mean to be forward, but is it Kurt with a 'k’?”

Kurt looks at him curiously.

“Yes, like 'The Sound Of Music’.”

Wes and David are seriously the best friends ever because they make some excuse to bow out then and leave him and Kurt alone. No wait. They are totally the worst friends ever because they left him alone with his  _soulmate_  and he has no idea what to do.

“So, um,” Ugh, so lame, Blaine berates himself. “I’m guessing that you’re having some trouble at your school.”

Kurt inhales sharply and his hands tense around his coffee.

“I- yes. Yes, I am.” Kurt takes a harsh breath, staring determinedly out the windows. “No-one, no-one’s ever…”

He trails off abruptly, biting his lip. Blaine clenched his coffee cup tightly. How dare these people not take care of his soulmate- didn’t they know how important and special Kurt was? Could they not see how amazing he was? (That little voice that told him that he was probably very biased in his opinion was very quickly squashed.) Blaine’s not sure who’s he’s more furious with- the people who’ve treated his Kurt so poorly, or himself for having his soulmate less than two hours away, and forced to suffer without him.

“There’s this… neanderthal, who’s made it his mission to make my life a living hell. And nobody seems to notice.”

His soulmate (Blaine has never been more sure about anything in his life.) looks like he’s on the edge of tears. It takes every ounce of self-control that Blaine has to keep himself from pulling Kurt into a tight hug and never letting him go back to that horrid place.

Instead, he sympathizes, recounting his own bullying experience- having a boy’s Name did not make him popular, especially when it was in such an obvious place. 

He and Kurt move onto lighter subjects after that, and sit talking for nearly an hour before Kurt looks at his watch and yelps that he has to get home. Blaine walks him to the front entrance.

“Wait, let me give you my phone number- just, so, if you want to talk again, you can contact me.”

Kurt waits, a small smile on his face, as Blaine writes out his name and number on a napkin. He hands it to Kurt with baited breath.

Kurt takes it, glances at the writing, smiles brightly at him and sticks the napkin in his pocket.

“Thanks. I’ll shoot you a text when I get home. Talk to you later, Blaine!”

“Talk to you then!”

Blaine keeps his smile plastered on as he waves to Kurt.

Kurt didn’t recognize his handwriting. Didn’t react to his name.

Blaine wonders if this is what heartbreak feels like.


	2. Two

Blaine’s heard of one-sided pairings before- it was one of those stories that Broadway musicals used all the time (He always cried for the Phantom). He had just never comprehended how awful it was.

The person that he’d been in love with since he was nine didn’t love him back. Barely knew who he was. Hadn’t texted him back for six hours.

A pounding on the door of his dorm room breaks his stupor. Blearily, he stumbles over to the door. Opening it he finds a cross Wes and promptly shuts the door again. The pounding starts up against almost immediately.

“Anderson! Open this door!”

Blaine doesn’t bother to respond. It’s been nearly two days since he met Kurt and he has since proceeded to hide in his room and play Katy Perry’s ‘The One The Got Away’ on repeat. He flops back down into his blanket nest. He’s been searching for his soulmate for forever and…..

“Blaine, I swear to God if you don’t open this door I will go find Flint and make him take it off of the hinges. You will have no door to slam in peoples face. 3….2….”

Blaine groans and lurches across the room to unlock the door.

“….o-” Wes raises and eyebrow at his disheveled state. “You look as though you’ve been hit by a truck.”

“Thanks.”

Wes walks into the room and makes a face at the state of it before turning back to Blaine.

“Care to explain why you dropped off the face of the planet after Friday afternoon?”

Blaine opens his mouth, closes it, sits down on the bed. Wes crosses his arms.

“That was him, Wes. My Kurt.”

Wes’ eyes go wide.

“Really? That’s great!”

“He- he doesn’t have my name.”

“…what?”

“Please don’t make me say it again, Wes.”

Wes sits down heavily in the desk chair.

“How are you sure?”

Blaine flops back on the bed to stare despondently at the ceiling.

“I wrote down my name and phone number for him. He just smiled and thanked me. No reaction at all.”

“…that’s it?” Wes sounds incredulous.

“What do you mean 'that’s it’?” Blaine lifts his head up enough to glare at Wes. Wes just rolled his eyes.

“Did it ever occur to you that a dashed off name on a napkin is not going to match your real Signature? I mean, did you even give him any indication that he’s your Named?”

“Because that wouldn’t have been awkward- 'Hi, I’m Blaine, I just manhandled you down a hallway and sang a song about touching my butt, but you’re my soulmate so please don’t run away screaming’.”

Wes chucks an eraser at his head. It bounces off Blaine’s forehead and only serves to deepen his scowl.

“You’re an idiot, Blaine.”

“Thank you for that inspiring pep talk, Wes.”

“Shut up. Why are you not going after your man?”

“What part of 'he’s not my Named….”

“Did you even ask him?!”

“No, because the most intimate knowledge of a person doesn’t usually come up in everyday small talk, Wes.”

It’s a pencil this time, and Blaine ducks.

“If you don’t go out to Mckinley High and talk to him then I’m getting the Warblers to compile a book of your most embarrassing moments and giving it to him myself. With pictures.”

“There’s really nothing that bad that you can hold over my-”

“Serenading Warbler Curt with Robin Thicke? There’s video of that one I’m pretty sure…”

“…..I’ll go after school tomorrow.”

_________________________________

He texts Kurt once he’s parked in one of the visitor spots.

hey, where are u?

Heading to lunch. Ugh.

um. im in the parking lot so where would u b from here?

Should I be concerned about you following me around?

NO!!!! i just need to talk 2 u.

Okay… I’m almost at the staircase into the courtyard.

the big square one?

Yep.

Blaine gets out of the car and cringes at how conspicuous his outfit is. He’s as obvious here as Kurt was at Dalton. He spots the big enclosed staircase and starts up it. He spots Kurt coming down as he hits the first landing.

Suddenly a boy in a letterman’s jacket, and much larger than Kurt, appears a few steps behind Kurt. And ugly look crosses the boy’s face and Blaine finds himself sprinting up the last few steps between him and Kurt.

The boy reaches out and shoves Kurt, hard. Fortunately, Kurt is only a few steps away from the second landing and Blaine manages to move fast enough to catch him. The force of the shove and slight height difference between him and Kurt cause them to stumble back and crash into the mesh fence, Blaine catching the brunt of the impact. (It's definitely not the scene Blaine had somewhat planned where he confesses his undying love for Kurt and sweeps him off his feet- or lets Kurt sweep him off his feet, he’s not too picky about it to be honest.)

The boy who pushed Kurt sneers as he passes them.

“What is the matter with you?” Blaine asks angrily, an arm still around Kurt.

Kurt just glares at the boy.

“I think that to list everything would take far too long, and require far too many big words. Just leave him alone, Karofsky.”

“And what would you do about it, Hummel?” The boy, Karofsky, takes a step towards them and Kurt is tense and nearly shaking in Blaine’s hold. Karofsky’s eyes flicker between the two of them for a second before something sharp sparks behind them. He steps close to them and leans in towards Kurt.

“You didn’t tell him did you?”

Kurt shakes his head frantically.

“Kurt told me everything.” Blaine says, heart pounding wildly. Kurt shoots him a terrified look. “So, leave us alone, or I’ll take this to a higher authority.”

“Like who, prep school?”

“Sue.” Kurt says suddenly. “She’s in charge now.”

Blaine has no idea what’s going on, but he goes with it. Karofsky takes a step back, apparently whoever Sue is is enough to make him back off. He turns to go and jabs a finger in Kurt’s direction.

“This isn’t finished, Hummel. Remember?" Karofsky disappears down the stairs.

Kurt really is shaking now, and has gone pale, so Blaine lowers them down to sit on the steps as best he can. He rubs longs soothing strokes into Kurt’s back, trying to calm him down. After a few minutes, Kurt stops shaking. He drops his head into his hands for a moment before abruptly standing and heading back up the stairs. Blaine follows him, having to move quickly to keep up with Kurt’s long strides through the school.

They end up in what looks like the chorus room and Kurt whirls around to face him. His arms are crossed tightly and his expression is hard and tight.

"You’re an idiot.” Kurt tells him harshly.

“….I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.” Blaine says, unsure of how to respond.

Kurt sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Karofsky’s at least three times your size- what on earth possessed you to shout at him?”

“He pushed you! You would’ve gotten hurt!”

“Yes! And I can take care of myself! I’m not some damsel in distress, okay? And I don’t need you coming in here and poking the wasp’s nest with a noble stick of good intentions. I intend on surviving to graduation!” Kurt jabs an angry finger at him.

“So I’m just supposed to sit back and do nothing? You shouldn’t have to be scared of coming to school everyday!" 

"No shit, Sherlock. But I’ve been dealing with these people for years- I know them. I know how to avoid the worst of it. Don’t try and play knight-in-shining armor when you don’t know what they’re capable of, okay?”

Kurt’s anger is gone almost as fast as it appeared. There is merely a bone deep weariness to him now, and it makes Blaine ache. Kurt sinks down to sit on the tiered floor, resting his weight on his knees.

“Kurt,” Kurt looks up at him. “I’m sorry- you’re right. It was stupid of me. I should’ve listened to you.”

Kurt sighed, and patted the floor space next to him for Blaine to sit. 

“What are you doing at Mckinley anyway? Shouldn’t you be crooning out top forty tunes with your back-up groupies?” Kurt teases.

Blaine blushes.

“No, I, um, actually came to talk to you.”

“About what?”

Blaine looks around the room.

“Do you mind if I shut the door?”

“No… go ahead.”

Kurt waits as Blaine crosses the room to shut out the hallway before coming to sit back down. Blaine fidgets for a moment, unsure of how to approach the topic. They’ve only known each other for a few days, despite Blaine’s comfort as though they’ve know each other years and despite the fact that they’ve been texting nearly constantly since they met. He holds out his hands beseechingly. Kurt takes them, questions written all over his face.

Blaine takes a deep breath.

“Kurt, there’s a moment, when you find the person you’ve been looking for forever. When, when I met you-” Blaine licked his dry lips, hoping that he didn’t have sweaty palms and grossing Kurt out. “That was a moment, for me.”

He released one of Kurt’s hands and pushed up his blazer sleeve to reveal the black leather cuff. He’d thought his hands would shake, but his fingers held steady as he undos the snap of the cuff, exposing his wrist to Kurt. He can barely bring himself to look up, but Kurt’s sharp intake of breath causes him to snap up and gauge the other boy’s reaction.

“Kurt?” He asks, when the other boy remains silent. “Say something?”

Kurt’s hand tightens on his.

“Is this a joke?”

“What?” Blaine is aghast at the cold, hard look in Kurt’s eyes. “No! Why would lie about this?”

Now Kurt looks utterly bewildered. He looks back down at Blaine’s wrist and then hesitantly traces the letters of his name with a gentle finger-tip. Blaine bites his lip when Kurt suddenly digs a fingernail into the dark ink and drags it down the curling length of the l of his name. Kurt stares as the pale mark he left in Blaine’s Name slowly fills back in.

“I just, you had the right to know, before we continue seeing each other. You, um,” Blaine forces the words out. “You have every right to never want to see me again, after today. I just, needed you to know.”

Kurt stays quiet, head bowed, still holding Blaine’s hand cupped in his own. After another few seconds of silence, Blaine moves to stand. He’s made a complete fool of himself and it’s better to save face now and save breaking down for once he’s made it back to Dalton.

“I’ll just, go. then." 

Kurt’s hand tightens over his as he tries to stand, keeping him there.

"No, please don’t. Don’t.” Kurt’s voice cracks wildly and Blaine realizes that there are tears on his face.

(Oh God, he is the worst soulmate ever- he’s made his Named cry twice within day of them meeting and he has to go find a rock to live under now for the rest of his life and would places deliver food to people living under rocks? What would his adress be?)

Blaine sits back down, clearing his wayward thought process, and makes an aborted motion to wipe the tears off of Kurt’s face. His hand flutters anxiously for a moment before settling back over top of Kurt’s.

“Sorry-” Kurt wipes away the few escaped tears. “It’s just, this is… really unexpected. I didn’t think that I’d ever have a soulmate. I- I don’t even know their name, or if I even have one at all, and then you just… show up, when I’m not expecting anything to happen.”

Blaine’s heart aches- how could someone as wonderful as Kurt think that there wouldn’t be someone out there for him? 

“I’ve been looking for you since I was nine.” Blaine says softly. Something else that Kurt said suddenly catches up to him. “Um, this might be impolite, but you said that you weren’t sure if you even had a soulmate. How’s that possible?”

Kurt sighs, .

“Well, I take after my mom,” A wry smile twists his mouth. “and her Name was on her back. I haven’t had anything appear anywhere else, so I just assumed that that would be where it would be. I checked once, a few years ago, but I haven’t since. So, I honestly have no idea what the name of my soulmate is.”

“I could check for you?” Blaine offered. “Named aren’t always romantic, right? Sometimes it’s just best friends.” Although, I really, really hope it isn’t.

Kurt leaned back, considering. Even if Blaine wasn’t Kurt’s soulmate, he was still his Named, and there was a certain level of trust in that.

“Okay. But, not here. And not today. I- I want to get to know you better first.”

“Okay. We can do that.”

Kurt lets out a sigh of relief. Blaine stood up, letting go of his hands, and brushed off his pants before offering a hand to Kurt.

“Can I take you out to lunch?”

Kurt smiled and took his hand.

“That would be great.”


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw for bullying and dysphoria

When Kurt Hummel is eight (nearly nine!) years old, his mother dies and he point blank refuses to wear a dress to her funeral. His father is to heartbroken and weary to argue when Kurt shows up, tiny face determined, hair chopped unevenly short, and wearing a small child-sized suit that is just slightly too big. He just fixes his kid’s sloppily tied bowtie and drives them to the church.

In the month that follows, Kurt checks his upper arm (bicep, he remembers) practically religiously. That’s where his dad’s Name was, and since he was a boy (he was, he was, he was) that was probably where his Name would appear. Soulmates were supposed to be the one person who would always be there for you, that would always love you. Kurt really, really, really wanted someone like that, because his dad is just so sad all the time. And he loves Kurt, he knows that, but his dad wasn’t quite done being sad about his mom yet and Kurt needed to be a big boy and stay strong.

His Name doesn’t appear.

And then he’s thirteen and bursting into tears in his kitchen because “Dad, I’m not a girl.” and there’s a whirlwind of explaining and relief and doctor’s visit’s and changing school districts and Kurt doesn’t even think to look for a Name on his body. (Not that he particularly likes his body in the first place. Not having a Name would just be another way that his body’s let him down.)

He’s nearing his fourteenth birthday, and he is doing homework when he is hit by crippling pain. He screams and falls out of his chair with a thud. Dimly he’s aware of his dad running downstairs, calling his name. But he can’t feel, can’t think beyond the inexplicable pain. It lasts for maybe ten minutes and Burt is dialing 911 when Kurt gasps, the pain vanishing a suddenly as it had come. Only, when it goes, then is a sudden nothingness that wasn’t there before. Some small awareness of him is gone, and he feels numb as he lets his dad manhandle him upstairs.

It isn’t until he’s fifteen that he realizes how nice it can be to let himself like other boys. It fills the tiny ache that still lingers for so long after… Even if he doesn’t have a soulmate, the potential for someone else to like him is still there.

Until it isn’t.

Until Kurt is reminded of just what kind of world he lives in. His ears ring with his father and someday-step-brothers yells.

Maybe it’s better to not have a Name after all. They’d probably be better off without ever meeting Kurt in the long run.

He throws himself into his academics and glee club instead, not that there’s a whole lot more to occupy his time, but it’s something. He takes more shifts at the garage, works on his vocal range, sketches out designs. Anything to take his mind off of the itch of nothingness at the back of his thoughts.

He is seventeen and fed up with everything. His friends, his teachers, his classmates, his bullies, himself. Everything.

He’s not sure if he should be offended or not when Puckerman tells him to go spy on the Warbler’s because he’s the only one that blend in at an all boys prep school, but he goes anyway.

He’s pretty sure that he’s lost for a second, but then a flood of boys in uniform come dashing down the stairs behind him. Classes must’ve let out. He reaches out at random.

“Excuse me?”

One of the boys turns around.

“Hi. I’m new here, do you know what’s going on?”

He meets the boy’s eyes. Oh. The boy sticks out his hand.

“I’m Blaine.”

“Kurt.”

The touch of Blaine’s hand in his is a gong ringing inside his head, the vibrations making his very bones shudder. Something in the dark recesses of his mind clicks back into place, something he’d never even known was broken, fixed. Oh.

And then he’s being pulled by the hand- there is an adorable private school boy holding his hand- down a long hall, and into a room thrumming with energy. The boy winks at him (is he flirting?) and serenades Kurt. His face hurts from his grin when the song ends and he applauds wildly. Seconds later he’s being shepherded down yet another hall by Blaine and two more blazered boys. He snaps out of his daydream then, prepares himself for the interrogation and blows to serve as a warning and….

They sit him down at a table and set a coffee in front of him. It’s remarkably civilized for boys his age, especially those who are probably going to beat him up in a few minutes. He tells them so and watches as Blaine’s eyes go wide and horrified.

“No!” Blaine nearly shouts and Kurt jumps. “I mean…”

The boy to Blaine’s left cuts him off.

“What Blaine is trying to say is that we have a strict zero-tolerance policy here, and that even if we wanted to beat you up, we wouldn’t be able to without getting expelled.”

“Oh.”

It takes Kurt by surprise. He’d assumed that at any school it would be like at Mckinley- the rules were there, but mostly a joke because they were never enforced. To think that there was a place where equality is real only an hour or so away from where he’s lived his whole life is a bombshell. He sits back, stares into his coffee.

“Anyway,” The boy on Blaine’s other side speaks up. “As you already know, this is Blaine, that’s David, and I’m Wes.” He sticks out his hand.

“Kurt.” Kurt says, shaking Wes’ hand. “Kurt Hummel.”

Wes’ hand goes stiff in his own and Blaine chokes on his coffee. Kurt stares at them as Blaine splutters and David thumps him on the back.

“Sorry.” Blaine gasps after a moment. “Um, I don’t mean to be forward, but is it Kurt with a ‘k’?”

“Yes, like The Sound Of Music.”

Wes and David excuse themselves suddenly, and vanish out into the depths of the school. Blaine stares at him for a long moment and Kurt shifts in his seat awkwardly. Takes a sip of coffee.

“So, um,” Blaine starts. “I’m guessing that you’re having trouble at your school?”

Kurt clenches his hand around his coffee, inhaling sharply. How did he…? Did it matter how he could…

“I- yes. Yes, I am.” Forces himself to breathe. “No-one, no-one’s ever…”

Noticed, cared, thought that he didn’t 'have it coming’…. He tries to find the words to explain.

“There’s this… neanderthal, who’s made it his mission to make my life a living Hell. And nobody seems to notice.”

His voice cracks wildly on the last word and he can feel the burn of tears behind his eyes. Kurt breathes deep and tries to push them back. He doen’t want to completely fall apart in front of a guy who’s basically a stranger.

“I know what you mean.” Blaine says.

They end up talking for nearly another hour, and if Kurt hadn’t glanced at his watch, he was sure he would’ve been grounded. Blaine shows him to the front entrance, smiling. He gives Kurt his phone number so that they could talk again (Kurt wil shriek about the fact that he actually got the number a cute guy later) and waits until he sees Kurt get in his car before heading back inside.

Kurt lets out a happy sigh and leans back in the drivers seat. What a great day. Whoever Blaine’s soulmate was had really lucked out- he was probably one of the nicest people Kurt had ever met. Which, probably didn’t count for much when he thought about it. Whatever.

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Shit. His dad was gonna kill him.


	4. Four

Kurt gets swept up in wedding planning- he can’t remember a time in recent memory when his dad’s been this happy- and is flying high on flower arrangements, color schemes, and his family’s happiness. Texting with Blaine is just icing on the cake. (School would be the rotten fruit that somehow made it into the batter, but this is not really a good time to bring up the fact that he’s miserable and/or terrified for roughly 8 out of 24 hours, 5 days a week. There’s a wedding to be planned and that would just be tacky.)

He’s walking the lunch on Monday when he gets a text from Blaine.

_hey, where are u?_

_Heading to lunch. Ugh._ He replies.

_um. im in the parking lot so where would u b from here?_

Kurt’s not sure whether to be flattered or concerned about Blaine’s sudden appearance.

_Should I be concerned about you following me around?_

_NO!!!! i just need to talk 2 u._

Kurt raised an eyebrow at his phone. Briefly he wondered if Blaine was hurt or something, but then he wouldn’t be wasting time texting Kurt if he was dying or something, right? Oh God, what if Blaine  _was_ dying and was coming by to break it to him gently? It would figure the first guy that Kurt had a chance with would be terminally ill. He shook himself abruptly. 

_Okay… I’m almost at the staircase into the courtyard._

_the big square one?_

_Yep._

Kurt can see a small, uniform-clad figure wind it’s way across the courtyard to the base of the staircase. Smiling, he starts down the stairs to meet Blaine. Blaine spots him and smiles back as he starts up the stairs to Kurt. Suddenly, his eyes slide past Kurt and go wide. Kurt falters for a second and Blaine is suddenly sprinting up the stairs, panic on his face.

Heavy hands suddenly send him off balance, tumbling down the last few steps and crashing in Blaine, who simply catches him as they smash into the chain-link fence surrounding the stairs.

He squeezes his eyes shut as they regain their footing, every instinct in him screaming to protect Blaine. But he can’t move.

“What is the matter with you?” Blaine exclaims angrily. Kurt recovers.

“I think that to list everything would take far too long and require far too many big words. Just- leave him alone, Karofsky.”

“And what would  _you_  do about it, Hummel?” Karofsky stepped forward menacingly. Kurt shrank back ever-so slightly. He can feel the dark ache of the bruises on his back where Blaine’s arm rests. Karofsky suddenly looks from Kurt to Blaine and Kurt’s stomach drops. The larger boy takes another step closer, his voice dropping suddenly.

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” There’s the vaguest hint of a threat and a whole lot of fear in the sentence. Kurt shakes his head quickly. He would never- he didn’t believe in outing people, he wasn’t like the people at his old school- and he had common sense not to purposefully antagonize someone three times his size that already hated him.

“Kurt told me everything.” Blaine says calmly. Kurt and Karofsky whip around to stare at him. Karofsky with a slow burning anger and Kurt with a strong urge to either tell him to shut up or slap him.  "So leave us alone or we’ll take this to a higher authority.“

"Like who, prep school?”

“Sue.” Kurt says. She’s the only person in the school who terrifies everyone and she has a soft spot for Kurt. “She’s in charge now.”

Karofsky has enough sense to step back and look uneasy at Kurt’s words.

“This isn’t finished, Hummel. Remember.” He jabs a finger at Kurt and the echo of too-hot breath too-close and  _I’ll Kill You_  rings through his head.

Karofsky disappears down the stares and Kurt is vaguely aware of Blaine guiding them down to sit on the grimy steps. He says something probably intended to be soothing but Kurt’s not focusing on him. His terror suddenly turns into anger.

How could Blaine do that? Just ignore him and then antagonize the very person Kurt had told him is awful to him? Blaine is either stupidly brave, or just plain stupid. He stands abruptly. He can’t be in public right now, can’t be so close to Blaine, can’t….

He rushes through the halls, hearing the gentle click of Blaine’s shoes following after him like a faithful puppy. Kurt goes to the choir room and whirls around to face Blaine as soon as they’re both in the room.

“You’re an idiot.” He says finally. Blaine visibly slumps at the reprimand.

“I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.”

Kurt sighs deeply.

“Karofsky is at least three times your size- what on earth possessed you to  _shout_  at him?”

Blaine looks indignant.

“He pushed you! You would’ve gotten hurt!”

“Yes! And I can take care of myself! I’m not some damsel in distress, okay? I don’t need you coming in here and poking the wasps nest with a noble stick of good intentions. I intend on  _surviving_  to graduation.” He leaves out the bit about how he’s delt with so much worse from his bullies, Karofsky included. Blaine bristles.

“So I’m just supposed to sit back and do nothing? You shouldn’t be scared to come to school everyday!”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Kurt spits. “But I’ve been dealing with these people for years- I know them. I know how to avoid the worst of it. Don’t try and play knight-in-shining-armor when you don’t know what they’re capable of, okay?”  _I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt on my account._ He deflates, the anger vanishing, leaving him weak-kneed and light headed. His overwhelming instinct to get Blaine away form the conflict has faded and he lets himself slump down to sit on the tiered floor of the room. He lets his head fall into his hands. 

“Kurt-” Blaine voice is soft. “I’m- I’m sorry, you’re right. It was stupid of me. I should’ve listened to you.”

Kurt sighed and patted the patch of floor next to him. Blaine gave him a small smile and sat down. Kurt clears his throat.

“What are you doing at McKinley anyway? Shouldn’t you be crooning out top forties with your back-up groupies?”

Blaine goes an interesting shade of scarlet and ducks his head.

“No. I, um, actually came to talk to you.”

“About what?”

Blaine glances around the room nervously.

“Do you mind if I shut the door?”

“No, go ahead.”

Kurt watches as Blaine crosses the room, his curiosity piqued. What could Blaine have to talk to him about that would make him react like this? Blaine comes back and sits down again, fidgeting for a moment before taking a deep breath and reaching out for Kurt’s hand. Kurt lets him take it, waiting.

“Kurt, there’s a moment, when you find the person you’ve been looking for forever. When, when I met you-” Blaine swallows hard, and his tongue darts out to moisten his lips. “That was a moment, for me.”

He reaches over to the wrist of the hand that’s holding Kurt’s and tugs his blazer sleeve up, revealing a black leather cuff. Kurt realizes what’s about to happen a split second before it does. Blaine pulls the cuff off.

Kurt can’t breathe. Can’t….

“Is this a joke?” He manages to get out. Apparently it comes out harsher and colder than he meant it too, but he can’t get his hopes up, can’t….

Blaine looks wounded.

“No! Why would I lie about this?”

Kurt stares at the black letter on Blaine’s wrist. His handwriting.

The name says  _Kurt._ He’d been so scared that it would be…..

He digs a nail gently into the skin, and pulls it across and inked line, waiting for the color to rub away. It doesn’t. He bites his lip to keep from crying. It says  _Kurt_. His Named has  _Kurt Hummel_  on his wrist.

“I just, you had the right to know, before we continued seeing each other. You, um,” Blaine looks as though he’s in pain. “You have every right to never want to see me again, after today. I just needed you to know.” Blaine’s voice cracks dangerously on the last few words.

Kurt stares determinedly at his Name in Blaine’s skin. He’s doing everything he can not to burst into tears. He’s spent so long sure that there would never be anyone with his Name and then it’s  _Blaine_ and he has Kurt’s  _real_  name and….

“I’ll just, go, then.” Blaine sounds defeated. He makes to pull his hand out of Kurt’s grip, but Kurt tightens his hold.

“No, please. Don’t.” Kurt can’t stop his voice from catching. The tears spill over. Blaine sits back down as Kurt attempts to stem the flow of tears.

“Sorry,” He laughs weakly. “IT’s just, this is… really unexpected. I didn’t think I’d ever have a soulmate. I mean, I don’t even know my Name, or if I have one at all, and then you just… show up.”

Kurt laughs again. The giddy relief of having a Named finally hitting him.

“I’ve been looking for you since I was nine.” Blaine’s voice is quiet. “Um, this might be impolite, but you mentioned that you don’t know if you have a Name? How does that work?”

Kurt sighs heavily.

“Well, I take after my mom,” More than you know. “and her Name was on her back. I haven’t had anything appear anywhere else, so I just assumed that that was where it would be. I checked once, a few years ago, but I haven’t since. So, I really have no idea.”

_Because I’m already thought of as a huge freak of nature, and finding out I don’t have a Name would be so much worse than just not knowing._

Blaine offers to check for him, but Kurt recoils from the idea. Blaine was his Named, but he couldn’t… Someday, maybe.

Blaine holds out his hand and offers to treat Kurt to lunch. Kurt smiles and lets himself be led out the doors.

Maybe ‘someday’ would be closer than he thought.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw for canon talk of bashing/violence

Almost without Kurt noticing, Blaine becomes a natural part of his life. They hardly go an hour without some sort of communication; during school it was usually text quips about their respective days, and in off time they could talk for hours at a time. More than once they left their phones on speaker as they worked through homework separately together. On weekends they tried to meet up as often as possible- coffeeshops (warm and comfortable and together), local theater performances (Blaine laughing as a red-faced Kurt gets an almost-lap dance from a lascivious Dr. Frankenfurter), or spending long afternoons at the Hummel-Hudson household (sing-alongs and attempts to hide tears over the end of movies).

He gets comfortable and his carefully constructed walls begin to waver dangerously. He falls asleep during one of their movie marathons, slumping over onto Blaine’s shoulder and only waking up when Blaine shifted position nearly an hour later. (He’d paid for his uncomfortable positioning with bruises and stiffness, but couldn’t quite bring himself to care.) When he’d woken up he’d looked up at Blaine for a moment before remembering himself and sitting bolt upright and apologizing.

In that brief moment he’d seen Blaine looking down at him with a gentle expression that he’d never seen on his face before- like Kurt was something precious and that Blaine was privileged to be able to hold him in his arms. Like he was looking at his soulmate.

(Sometimes he wonders if he’s slowly breaking Blaine’s heart.)

Once, he comes downstairs and finds Blaine looking through the collection of pictures on the hallway wall. His heart misses a beat. Blaine looks over and smiles at him.

“You were a cute kid, Kurt.” He taps one of the frames.

Kurt feels his heart begin again as he looks and sees a smaller version of himself, in the dark too-big suit that he’d worn to his mother’s funeral. The picture in question was from a year or so later, when he’d worn it to a cousin’s wedding. Freckles coat his nose and cheeks and his bowtie only serves to accent his sun-red face. He sighs in relief and hurries Blaine along.

(He doesn’t tell Blaine that every once in a while he checks his arms for his Name. Or that he hopes so desperately that it’ll be Blaine’s name. Or that some days he’s so terrified that his Name will be some stranger who could never want him and that it would be better to be Nameless.)

Realistically he knows that if he wanted to, he would never have to tell Blaine. Blaine would never push him, or pry into his privacy. He’s also fairly certain that Blaine wouldn’t treat him any differently or judge him or run away. He wouldn’t even be thinking about telling Blaine if it weren’t for the fact that Blaine was the best friend he’d ever had and he felt they’d grown close enough that it would be safe.

But Blaine was convinced that Kurt was his soulmate.

He hadn’t brought it up again. Not even after so many months since Kurt had asked him to drop it. But Kurt knew, sort of, what it was like to be in love with someone who never looked back at you.

(Oh how he wanted to look back.)

He makes up his mind in March. If Blaine is his soulmate, then he should accept him no matter what (right?). Even if Blaine wasn’t his Named, Kurt knew that he was hopelessly, head-over-heels gone for this boy. He had to try.

Kurt stares into his cereal Saturday morning. His dad wanders into the kitchen and pours a cup of coffee before leaning on the counter.

“Pretty sure that you can’t set food on fire with your eyes, kiddo. Especially if it’s soggy food.”

Kurt blinks and looks up.

“What?”

Burt chuckles.

“Blaine coming over today?”

“Yes. Um.” Kurt looks back down at the tabletop. “I think I want to tell him.”

“About what?”

“You know.” Kurt gestures towards his torso. “Like, come out. To Blaine.”

“You’re sure, Kurt?”

Kurt worries his lower lip in his teeth.

“I- yes. Yes I’m sure.”

“It’s you’re call, kiddo. I was gonna go run a few errands, but would you rather I stick around instead?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just… nervous.”

He stood up and moved to put his bowl in the sink. Burt pulls it out of his nerveless fingers gently and sets it on the counter before tugging on his shoulder.

“C’mere.” He pulls Kurt into a hug. Kurt closes his eyes and lets out a sigh he hadn’t been aware of holding back. “You and Blaine got somethin’ special, alright? And if he can’t see that, it’s his loss.” He let’s Kurt go. “I’ll be back in a few hours, ‘kay?”

“’kay. Thanks, dad.”

“Anytime.”

Blaine shows up a little over an hour after Burt leaves. Kurt is full of a jittery energy and if he stands still he’s fairly sure his nerves will paralyze him and he’ll never be able to go through with it. He opens the door and stares at Blaine for a long moment.

“Hi.”

“Hey?” Blaine gives him a quizzical smile. “Am I allowed to come in?”

“What? Oh yeah, sorry.”

Kurt moves out of the doorway and lets Blaine past to hang up his coat and take off his shoes. Absently, he follows Blaine up the stairs to his room.

“Hey.” Blaine murmurs, stopping suddenly once they’re in the room so as Kurt nearly runs into him. “Are you okay? You seem… off, today.” He catches Kurt’s hands in his own, his warm eyes concerned.

“I’m fine.” Kurt takes a breath. “It’s just, we need to talk and I’m not quite sure where to start exactly.”

Blaine sits down on the bed, releasing Kurt’s hands.

“You’re not breaking up with me, are you?” Blaine jokes, attempting a laugh. It comes out warped and scared.

Kurt’s eyes go wide.

“No! No.” He sits down next to Blaine on the bed. He takes Blaine’s hand in his and turns it over so that the wrist with his name on it faces up. “Can… may I see my name?”

Blaine sucks in a breath.

“Of course, Kurt.”

Kurt pulls the leather strap off.

He stares at the Name-  _his_  name oh God- and resists the urge to run. Get away before he falls to far again and the rejection hurts that much more. This is too big, too much and he can’t, he can’t…. He clamps down on the urge with an emotional jerk, clamping down with a metaphorical iron fist. One more, one last, chance.

“When I was fourteen,” he starts. “I was pretty sure that my soulmate, if I ever had one in the first place, died. ”

Blaine’s eyes widen even further.

“What…”

“I was doing homework, and then suddenly I was in this awful pain. Scared my dad something horrible, I was just lying on the floor screaming bloody murder for about fifteen minutes. And when I came to, that little connection, that feeling? up here?” He tapped the side of his head. “It was gone. No connection obviously meant no more soulmate, so, I just, didn’t let it bother me anymore.”

Breathes in, breathes out. Draws upon all his courage.

“And I wasn’t sure, even if I found my potential soulmate, that they would want me. I’m, I-“ Breathes in, breathes out. “I wasn’t born Kurt Hummel.”

There’s a beat of silence. He can’t bring himself to look at Blaine.

(Blaine just waits and watches him with gentle eyes.)

“The name I was given at birth was Liesal.  Liesal Hummel. But I never really… I was never comfortable with being…  _her_.” The last word is bitterer than he’d expected.

He waits, letting Blaine connect the dots.

“So you decided that if you had to be a Von Trapp, it would be the one  _you_  picked?” Blaine asks quietly.

Kurt shoulders slump and he holds back a hiccupy laugh.

“A bit more complicated, but something like that, yeah.”

“Of course- Kurt Hummel would never let the world dictate who he is.”

Kurt finally looks Blaine in the eye. Blaine just smiles softly at him. Kurt looks, trying to find the moment when Blaine will make an excuse to leave or the judgment that he’s seen so many times before or even disgust because Blaine is convinced that Kurt was his soulmate and what if….

But he doesn’t find it. Blaine doesn’t appear to be looking at him any differently than he had a few minutes ago. Blaine turns his hand over and grasps Kurt’s.

“Thank you for trusting me so much.” He says quietly. “And, um, I think I might be able to explain the soulmate connection, or lack there of, if you want.”

Kurt nods.

“My freshman year of high school, I went to public school. There was a Sadie Hawkins dance that spring, so I asked my friend and we went together, as friends. We had a good time at the dance, but, um, we were waiting for his dad to pick us up and these guys showed up and uh. Beat the living crap out of us.”

Kurt stares at him. Blaine clutches his hand a little tighter.

“I was in the hospital for a few weeks, and in a medically induced coma for part of that. My head was really messed up and there was swelling in my brain. So that feeling that you said vanished was probably just been my brain being broken.  Not you.”

Kurt feels shaken, as though some core part of him has been loosened and then put back into place even better than before.  He’d never really considered that the problem, that strange aching absence that he hadn’t noticed before it was gone, could have been from his Named’s end. That his soulm- That Blaine could take everything that Kurt was and love him anyway.

He pulls Blaine into a tight hug, unable to put words to his emotions. Blaine holds him just as tightly and they sit, twisted slightly, arms around each other, for as long as they can stand.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I completely forgot to upload this with the others last night, whoops!)
> 
> Warnings for bullying and anxiety in this chapter.

Kurt is so ready for the week to be finished that it isn’t even funny. It hasn’t necessarily been a terrible week- nothing particularly bad has happened (although, his scale for judging that might be a little skewed. Scale of one to ten of shitty weeks in Kurt Hummel’s life, one being “Buddy, your mom’s not coming home.” Ten being “Kurt, we’ve decided to feature you as a soloist at Nationals because you are obviously the most talented and well-dressed person in the club.” Yeah right.) It’s just all been so… ugh. Thank God that it was Thursday. He just has to make it through last period today, classes tomorrow, and then he could just relax for the weekend. Blaine was coming over tomorrow to help him make dinner and then they were going to watch Jersey Shore. (Well, maybe Jersey Shore. Kurt had petitioned for Pimp My Ride more than once, but Blaine didn’t like car shows.) Friday night dinners together with his dad had adapted as their little family grew, so now it was a standing every other week tradition to accommodate for everyone’s schedules. Blaine had tried to excuse himself politely as possible several times once he found out about their tradition, but Burt had rolled his eyes and told him that if he was going to be around often enough to be there regularly at dinnertime, then he was welcome to stay.

Tonight, he, Rachel, and Mercedes were having a sleep over and pampering themselves. They’d been looking forward to it all week. Midterms were coming up, as well as SATs and the pressure to start applying to colleges. They all needed a break.

Kurt picks Mercedes up after school and they head over to the Berry’s. The two of them had already succeeded in making Rachel pinky swear that she could only pick one Barber Streisand movie tonight. Kurt happily set up the ingredients that they would need for all natural facials on one kitchen counter, while the girls debated which snacks to pair with which movies that the three of them had picked out for the night.

He ends up texting Blaine halfway through  _The Nutcracker_  (Rachel’s running commentary on the ballet dancer’s forms made him tune out a while ago). But he makes the mistake of smiling at his phone; which ends in the girls interrogating him about Blaine.

They coo over the picture that he pulls up of Blaine looking particularly handsome and Kurt allows himself to grin smugly. Rachel, of course, is the one to steer the conversation in the one direction that he didn’t want it to go.

“I think that it’s so wonderful that you’ve found your Soulmate so soon.” She sighs. Kurt freezes and they all notice.

As much as he loves Rachel, he honestly wants to strangle her sometimes.

“Is he actually your Soulmate?” Mercedes asks.

Kurt feels trapped. He doesn’t want to spill any of his or Blaine’s personal life, but at the same time, he desperately wants to talk to someone other than Blaine about their conundrum. (Not that they really talk about it.) Who better to talk to than his best friends? He lets out a long breath, considering.

“Can you two keep a secret?”

Their eyes light up and they settle in to listen.

“Blaine isn’t my Soulmate. Well, he has  _my_  name, but I… I don’t have one.” He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t tell them how he sure that he’s breaking Blaine heart and it’s neither of their faults.

“Oh,  _Kurt_.” Rachel sounds stricken.

“But, do you love each other?” Mercedes asks after a long, tense pause.

Kurt opens his eyes and stares down at the comforter.

“I… I’m not sure, honestly.”

Something about the conflict in his expression seems to make them let it go for now. They spend the rest of the night watching sappy old musicals. (The one-sided Naming of Fanny Brice has never hit closer to home.)

            //////

Two days later he and Blaine are singing an enthusiastic duet in Kurt’s bedroom. Well, they’re supposed to be studying, but singing along to Madonna is better than biology any day. Blaine bounces on the bed and sings down to Kurt with a ridiculously pouty face and his hand on his heart-  _oh Santa baby_ \- as Kurt tries to sing along and not laugh too much. Blaine attempts to bounce and spin at the same time and ends up instead smacking into Kurt and sending them both crashing to the floor. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that either of them have sustained any serious injury. Kurt groans as Blaine quickly untangles their limbs and moves so that they’re lying side-by-side, his arm trapped under Kurt’s head.

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks.

“I’m fine, I think that my ego is more damaged than anything else.”

Blaine turns too look at him and they both seem to suddenly realize just how close their faces are. Neither makes a move to shift away. The song changes to some other peppy holiday song, but neither of them bother to pay attention. Blaine tries not to look at Kurt’s lips and fails. Really badly. (Kurt’s gorgeous and his Soulmate and he can’t really find any regret in wanting to kiss him. Kurt deserves to be kissed. A lot. Preferably by Blaine.)

Kurt’s throat bobs as he swallows dryly.

“Kurt,” Blaine almost whispers, like it’s a great secret. “I really, really want to kiss you right now.”

Kurt freezes. Because it’s one thing to know that your best friend is probably your soulmate and is in love with you, than to know that they are truly  _attracted_  to you. He’s never had to deal with this aspect of a relationship before. Never even considered it outside of a vague development in the future. (Karofsky didn’t count because, well,  _hello_  creepy.) But Blaine is nothing like that. The look in his honey-gold eyes makes him feel warm and cherished, not terrified or making him feel as though he wants to scrub his own skin away to get the gross feeling off. Blaine is here in his room, so close that he can feel his body heat, and he can’t take his eyes off of Kurt’s lips. Blaine, who Kurt knows loves him at least enough that he would never hurt Kurt willingly. Kurt feel how nervous he is, his own frozen tension clattering along with Blaine’s twanging nerves. It takes him a moment to realize that Blaine hasn’t moved. Won’t move without a word from Kurt first. He takes a breath.

“But, what if you’re not my Soulmate?”

Blaine smiles warmly at him.

“I’ve decided that I don’t really care. I’m convinced that you are, because I’ve never had this kind of connection with anyone before, but even if there is another Kurt Hummel out there somewhere, he won’t trump my feelings for you. I… I’m pretty sure that I’m falling for you, Kurt. And, even if we don’t end up being Soulmates, I still want to have you in my life for as long as you’ll stay. You’re my best friend before anything else, and I would never want to do anything to ruin that.”

He fumbles for Kurt’s hand with his free hand and Kurt lets him tangle their fingers together, squeezing Blaine’s hand to get him to keep talking. Blaine takes a deep breath, leaning forward to press their foreheads together.

“I would love to be able to hold your hand and kiss you and take you out on dates. I’d be over the moon to be permitted to be your boyfriend. But, I don’t, I don’t want to pressure you into anything. I…. you’re probably the most important person in my life, Kurt, Soulmate or not. You  _move_  me in a way that no one else does, and I’d take any excuse to be able to be close to you.”

He’s so damn  _earnest_.

Kurt stares at him, a little dazed. Blaine would give up being with his  _Soulmate_  to stay with  _Kurt_. He’s falling in love with  _Kurt_. (Kurt has never wanted to have a Name so badly before. To be able to be one hundred percent sure that Blaine is his.) Would it really be so bad to be selfish in this one thing? To let himself be happy in having Blaine’s attentions? He squeezes Blaine’s fingers again.

“I would love to be your boyfriend, Blaine, but,” The sudden, careful look of wonder and excitement that lights up Blaine’s face almost cause his to pause. “But you have to promise me, that if you do meet your Soulmate and he’s not… not me. You have to promise me that you won’t string either of us along. Okay? Because I don’t think that I could take it if that happened.”

“Kurt, of course.” Blaine chokes out, untangling their fingers to reach up and cup Kurt’s cheek, his thumb brushing along Kurt’s cheekbone. “I would never, never want to hurt you.”

Kurt gives him a watery smile.

“You should kiss me now if you really want to.”

Blaine smiles brilliantly. He slides his hand to cup the back of Kurt’s head, leaning forward slowly.

Kurt doesn’t know what he expects kissing Blaine to be like- fireworks? But when their lips meet, all he feels in a deep warmth and familiarity that aches in his chest like a forgotten bruise. He grips at Blaine’s shoulders, unsure (and not wanting to get hair-gel on his hands.). He feels safe with Blaine, kissing Blaine. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting when daydreaming about future boyfriends. (There had always been some part of him that was sure that he would have to hold back, or change some essential part of himself for his Named to love him properly. Some tiny part that was convinced that he would have to hold onto fear whenever he kissed another man.) He inhales sharply, turning his head so that their lips align better, bring a hand up to cup Blaine’s cheek. Blaine breaks the kiss for a brief moment to press a quick kiss to the thin skin of Kurt’s wrist of the hand cupping his own cheek, where Blaine’s Name would fall if inked onto Kurt’s skin instead. He treats Kurt like he is something precious and it makes his breath catch. Their lips meet again and Kurt hums happily into it.

Eventually they pull apart with a soft, wet sound that makes Kurt blush even deeper. Blaine is blushing too, his cheeks staining a pretty rose color above his wide grin. He giggles, and Kurt laughs at him for it and within seconds they are clutching each other on the floor, laughing for no reason that either of them can find.

When the laughter eventually dies down, they move to Kurt’s bed and are content to hold each other until Burt shouts up to them about dinner.

/////

Kurt walks into school on the first Friday after winter break confidently. It was the last school day of the week, the weather was perfect for the outfit he’d put together, and he felt good. It was going to be a good day. Blaine was coming over for dinner that night both to help cook (see: chop what vegetables Kurt instructed him too) and then they were having a fashion night and going through the latest issue of Vogue together. (Probably kiss a lot more, if Kurt had anything to say about it.)

His predictions held true through third period.

A rough hand grabs his jacket and yanks him down a little-used side hallway by the woodshop. His phone flies out of his hand and Kurt’s heart leaps up into his throat. Fear seizes up his limbs.

“I told you not to tell anyone.” An angry voice hisses in his ear. “And the first thing you do is run off and tell some random fancy-ass boyfriend of yours. You’re lucky that your freak squad has been around so much, but you still haven’t learned that you can’t just walk around like you do and not have consequences.”

Kurt can’t breathe.

“Please just let me go.” He whispers.

Karofsky doesn’t say anything else, just shoves him hard. There’s the slam of a door and then it is dark.

/////

Blaine was getting concerned.

It was nearly three fifteen and there was still no sign of Kurt.  They’d agreed to meet out in front of the school so Blaine could pick him up and take them to the Hummel’s for dinner. He tried Kurt’s number again, but it went straight to voicemail for the fourth time. Even if Kurt had stayed after glee to talk to a teacher, he wouldn’t be taking this long, right?

Blaine got out of his car, something nervy and cold settling in the pit of his stomach. He walks quickly towards the school.

There are plenty of clubs and activities still meeting, so the doors are unlocked. The second he enters the building he’s hit by a wave of crippling, mind-numbing, fear.  _He’s going to die here oh God no one will ever find his body and it’s just terrible that he’s going to die literally in high school because that is so tacky but he can’t breathe can’t breathe it’s so dark…_   Blaine gasps, staggering upright. Forces his feet to move and finds himself running with no heed to the burning at his wrist.

He nearly runs into several stray people who give him odd looks as he careens through the unfamiliar halls. He feels as though his heart will beat out of his chest. Blaine runs past a small side hallway and nearly falls from the abruptness at the feeling of being pulled back by an intangible source. He turns back and jogs slowly down the hall until he stops in front of what appears to be a closet door. His heart sinks.

“Kurt?” He calls, hoping against hope that he doesn’t get a response from behind the door.

He hears some shuffling and a muffled voice.

“Kurt, if you’re in the closet, can you hit the door or something before I break into school property with no reason as to why.”

There’s a thud against the door.

“I haven’t been in the closet for years.” Kurt’s voice is weak and quavery, but Blaine lets out a sigh of relief at hearing it.

“Okay, hold tight for one second and I’ll get you out.”

He digs through his pockets and hopes that he has something that he can… a bobby pin, excellent. Thank goodness some of the guys at Dalton were actually spoiled delinquents like so many thought. He picked at the lock carefully until it finally popped.

Blaine opened the door slowly to find a very pale Kurt sitting on the concrete floor. He sighed in relief and held out a hand to Kurt. Kurt grimaced sheepishly.

“I, I don’t think that I can stand up.”

Blaine steps closer and realizes that Kurt is shaking, his fists clenched tight, and arms crossed tightly across his chest. He holds his hands up and crouches down, trying to seem less threatening. He knows that Kurt’s not scared of  _him_  but that he’s still trying to shake of the terror from before the door opened.

“Hey, hey it’s okay. You’re safe now. We’re gonna go to your house, make some dinner, and pick out a movie to watch. Sound good?”

Kurt nods jerkily. Blaine extends a hand to help him up and Kurt grabs it in a death grip. Once they step out of the janitor’s closet, Kurt looks around at the floor. (He doesn’t let go of Blaine’s hand.)

“Do you see my phone? Ka- I dropped it when… um. It should be on the floor here somewhere.”

They look around fruitlessly for a few minutes but Kurt eventually just shakes his head and hopes that maybe he’ll get the lasts upgrade after this. They make it to the parking lot before Kurt’s knees actually do give out like he was afraid of. He can’t decide if it’s relief at finally being out of the building or a sudden drop in adrenaline now that he’s no longer waiting in the dark for Karofsky to come back and kill him, or worse.

Kurt doesn’t hit the cold sidewalk like he’d been expecting, feels Blaine’s arms wrap around him like warm, giving cords and ignores the slight ache that comes from the tightness of his grip over old bruises, hears the soothing calmness of the other boy’s voice disguising his thinly veiled panic as he lowers them to the ground without toppling over, holds onto him. Kurt can’t quite catch his breath, gasping for air, is he crying…? Blaine’s hand is warm, even through Kurt’s many layers, and calming as he runs his hand gently up and down Kurt’s back. Kurt focuses on that and not the suddenly lack of mindless fear and survival instinct that his brain doesn’t seem to have caught up on. Blaine’s finger rub over the soft, scratchy material of his jacket.

His breathing slows eventually, evening out as his brain catches up with his body. The comforting scent of Blaine’s cologne and hair-gel replacing the musty chemical coolness of the janitor’s closet. Kurt realizes that he never actually let go of Blaine’s hand and the angle their hands are at is horribly awkward. He takes a deep breath and pulls away from the warmth of Blaine’s body to reposition their hands. Gives himself space to breathe.

“You okay?” Blaine asks.

“Yes, I…” Kurt lets out a small, shaky laugh. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that was.”

(Blaine does, even though it’s been a couple years since Sadie Hawkins and his recovery, but he lets it go.)

“Let’s get you home.” He says instead.

//////

They are greeted at the (nicknamed by Finn) Hudmel household by Burt. He raises his eyebrows at the pair of them.

“I got some calls about you missing class, bud.” He directs at Kurt. “Care to explain?”

Burt glances at Blaine, and his and Kurt’s joined hands.

Kurt freezes, trying to come up with an excuse. Blaine squeezes his hand.

“I had a run in with a neanderthal third period and had to do damage control.”

“For the rest of the school day.” Burt says, deadpan.

“…yeah.”

“You want to tell me the truth kiddo?”

Kurt seems to wilt under the disapproval in his father’s voice.

“I wasn’t lying, I just… he kinda… locked me in an old janitor’s closet until Blaine found me. But I mean it wasn’t a locker this time, so it really wasn’t… that bad.” Kurt winces and trails off at his unintended confession.

There’s an awkward pause in which Burt’s face darkens and Blaine tries to both support Kurt and keep his own composure intact. Kurt just looks like he wants to disappear and act like this conversation never happened. Blaine squeezes his hand, and then pauses.

“Wait, Kurt, you were in there since third period?”

Blaine had thought that Kurt had been cornered at the end of the day or before last period. Not at least- he tries to add it up in his head- five hours before Blaine had gotten there. His heart sinks. No wonder Kurt had been so on edge.

Kurt lets out a loud sigh. His posture straightens out and he lets go of Blaine’s hand. (He tries not to feel disappointed and fails.)

“Yes, okay? It was a terrible experience that will add to my already  _glowing_  opinion of McKinley High, but there were no witnesses that would fess up and no one with any kind of power in the school will do anything unless I show up with broken bones. And even then they’ll probably try to insist that I just tripped.” His voice is bitter. “So since there’s nothing to be done, I’d just like to change and have a nice evening in now, okay?”

He turns on his heel and heads upstairs to his room.

Burt sighs and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Stubborn as hell that kid is.” He looks at Blaine. “Anything else he’s not telling me so that I don’t keel over and die?” At Blaine’s uneasy look, he adds on. “I know that he doesn’t tell me stuff so that I don’t get worked up and have another heart attack. I’m fine now, but he worries too much for his own good.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable betraying Kurt’s trust like that.” Blaine says, shifting uncomfortably. He knows that Burt would do anything to keep Kurt safe, that there would be no better person to tell about what Kurt was facing in school. But. “…Karofsky is the name of the guy that seems to …hassle him the most.” He hedges.

Burt nods.

“That the kid that locked him in that closet?”

“Yeah.”

When Blaine glances at the stairs again, Burt waves a hand at him.

“Go ahead, kid. Kurt and I will be having a long talk about this later, don’t worry.”

Blaine hurries up the stairs after Kurt, knocking quickly on his bedroom door before opening it.

“Kurt? Did you want to-“ He lets out an embarrassing squeak and freezes in place for a second, staring, before slapping a hand over his eyes and slamming the door shut. The image of his boyfriend’s almost bare back echoing in his eyelids like a particularly bright flash of light. (So much revealed skin, accented by that black of his binder and the dark letters down his spine. Wait.) He hears several thuds and some muffled cursing followed by and beat of silence and the door being wrenched open again to reveal a shirt-covered and irate Kurt.

“You go to prep school and you can’t remember to knock on a door before entering?”

“I did knock! I just… didn’t wait. I thought that you’dve finished changing. I’m sorry.”

Kurt rolls his eyes and steps back to let him in. Blaine catches his hand as he passes and Kurt lets himself be tugged over to sit on his bed. They sit facing each other, Blaine tangling their fingers together.

“Are you okay?” Blaine asks. Kurt arches an eyebrow and shoots him a look conveying how stupid he finds the question to be. “No, I mean… you were really shaken up at the school. I could… I could  _feel_ how scared you were being trapped like that. And…”

“Wait, what?” Kurt interrupts. “You could feel what I was feeling?”

“Yeah, you thought that it would be tacky to literally die in high school and…. Oh.”

His eyes go wide and they stare at each other for a long moment.

( _Wait_.)

“Can, can  _you_  feel anything?” Blaine asks cautiously. Kurt shakes his head.

“No, I don’t think so.”

(Blaine dares to think that he sounds disappointed.)

“He didn’t do anything to you aside from lock you in there, right?” The niggling thought at the edge of his consciousness won’t quite form.

He sighs in relief when Kurt shakes his head again.

“No, he just shoved me. I fell because I was off-balance, but nothing else.”

Blaine scrunches his forehead and tries not to blush.

“But you have something, um, on your back?”

Now they’re both pink in the face.

“It’s…” Kurt clears his throat. “It’s probably just old bruises. Um. Lockers aren’t the most forgiving things to be… to run into. And sometimes I wear my binder too long and that causes it too.”

“I… okay. But can you promise that you’ll check and keep an eye on your back? I don’t want you to be sitting around in pain.”

The thought of Kurt hurting, no matter how valid or unavoidable his reasons for it were, made Blaine’s heart ache. Kurt rolls his eyes and stands up.

“If you’re going to mother-hen me for the rest of the day, I’ll go check right now and tell you I was right and that I’m fine. Then we’re going to start making dinner and pick out a movie for later. But then you can’t hover over me, okay?”

Blaine sighs.

“Fine.”

Kurt sashays to his bathroom and shuts the door. Blaine waits for him to return on the bed, foot twitching anxiously. (Even if Kurt was hurt, would he actually tell Blaine?) He strains his ear to try and hear anything from the other room.

A long several minutes longer, Kurt comes back into the bedroom, shirt untucked, face unreadable. Blaine half-stands, concerned about blank expression on Kurt’s face.

“Kurt?”

“You should check.” Kurt says abruptly, turning his back to Blaine.

“I… okay? Are you sure?”

“Yes. And you took that first aid course over the summer for lifeguarding right?”

Kurt’s breath catches as Blaine rucks the back of shirt up. His hands clench and flex in his effort to stay calm. Blaine’s hands are warm.

“Maybe I saw a shadow or something, Kurt. Because I don’t see anything that…”

Blaine’s voice cuts off abruptly as he lifts Kurt’s shirt higher, and Kurt knows that he’s seen the dark letters that trail down the dip of his spine from under the dark fabric of his binder. He feels Blaine’s fingertip trace down the exposed letters, barely touching his skin. (From top to bottom –d, e, r, s, o, n- Kurt’s mind supplies.)

“ _Kurt_.” Blaine breathes. “Is this, are you…?”

He let’s Kurt’s shirt drop back down, tugs at Kurt’s hip to get Kurt to turn and face him.

Kurt’s eyes are shining when he turns around. Blaine can’t quite fight back the lump in his own throat either.

“It’s your name. Just in case you were wondering with so few letters to go on. Blaine D. Anderson. You have stupidly endearing handwriting, by the way.”

 Blaine laughs wetly, taking Kurt’s hands in his own, turning his wrist so that Kurt’s name inked into his skin is visible.

 “I’m freaking out a little bit. ” Kurt adds, moving them the sit back down on the bed.

 “Me too.” Blaine says, but he stares at Kurt with so much hope in his eyes.

Kurt kisses him then, reveling in kissing his Named.

His Soulmate.


End file.
